I booked some Wiggles tickets (Adelaide) and was interested to note that out of three categories "A Reserve" was literally the lowest grade of seats.
We've seen regulators on the warpath of misleading labeling of products (Nurofen etc) but what about services?
Also noticed with hotels (cough Hilton) that "Deluxe" is the lowest grade of room or you can pay more for "Superior", but I can tell you from experience the rooms are literally exactly the same.
Can you give any more examples?
I'd like to think if you go to China to buy souvenirs, they'll all be things like Chiense flags, with a little description, "Made in Australia".
Of course, more likely, they'll be made in Vietnam…
I don't know about that, but if you Google it you will find the Chinese city where they make all the world's Christmas decorations.
"Designed in Australia"
"Developed in Australia"
Might as well add
"Sold in Australia"
Supplement companies are the worst for it. Claiming products scientifically proven to build and increase testosterone, really unfair to newbies just starting to hit the gym who expect said products to make them huge.
Yea. It pisses me off that complementary medicine (vitamins, fish oil etc) do not have a "made-in" location. Unless it is made in Australia, the Kangaroo Icons everywhere.
Not really a consumer good, but recently I have been watching Britains Got Talent. They have an act that dress as Star Wars Storm Troopers and dance routines like Gangnam Style and Madonna's Vogue. Straight copies. The judges cream themselves over it, but all it is is a gimmick and stealing other peoples ideas and intellectual property. They wouldn't have got through without the costumes and being blatant rip offs because they are not actually that good dancers, so really gets my goat that someone legit talented is missing out to these thieves. I expected talent, and I received plagiarism. /rant over LOL
"reality" tv
Internet Related services in general:
ADSL2+ related naming their services "Superfast"…even if you are 4km+ from the exchange or suffering from congestion..
Upload speeds usually hidden deep in terms and services..(or described in a vague way or not at all)
'Unlimited' data …tied in with behind the scenes throttling ( w/ sub par network management) during peak hours..and also with tie in to fair use policies.
Olive Spread 500g at ALDI only has 19% Olive oil
I have actually been debating complaining to ACCC about this misguidance
Well they're not lying. It's not like peanut butter Tim Tams containing no peanuts.
Of course they don't. They contain "peanut butter". Whether the peanut butter contains peanuts is another matter.
Half of it isn't even olive oil, I wonder if a product has to contain a certain percentage to be called that.
Is there much difference in other brand Olive Spread? IIRC the spread's in Coles/WW is still very low. Same with avocado dips that contain 6% avocado.
Or juices, contain like 5% juice. Or Solo is like 5% lemon.
"To free a country" usually means opening up their markets for external penetration of financial sectors, political influence/submission and extractive industries to sell their products cheaper and destroying local industries for simple things like soaps, toothpaste and colas.
"PETA Approved" or "RSPCA Approved".
Those frauds kill about 95% of any animal they "rescue". The icing on the hypocrisy cake though, is how they'll sell their "RSPCA Approved" certification to any slaughterhouse in the country for a quick buck and then use the royalties to hire lobbyists to pressure governments into conceding more areas of legal control and prosecution to them - at a higher cost to the taxpayer, when different levels of government agencies already do the same.
I think it's pretty unfair to put PETA and RSPCA in same line.
For someone who doesn't understand the difference, please explain. Pardon my ignorance.
I found this written by someone else on Yahoo answers - but I think it sums it up very nicely.
"The RSPCA is an animal welfare organization. They believe animals have the right to be treated humanely and have their basic needs met, and that animals destined for slaughter have the right to a pleasant existence prior to slaughter, and for that slaughter to be as painless as possible. In most places, the RSPCA is empowered to enforce animal cruelty related laws and has been contracted by the government to do so.
PETA is an animal rights group. They believe animals should all live wild and free, not be kept as pets, not be eaten, not be influenced or exploited by humans in any way. They are against zoos, keeping of animals as pets, eating of meat, consumption of dairy products, and even honey. They are not at all empowered to enforce any laws, and use scare tactics and gross-out campaigns in an attempt to make their point."
I don't know whether infinite's accusations against RSPCA are accurate or not, but it still doesn't feel right to put them on same level as PETA.
Another great example is the OPAL "Healthy Eating" government initiative in schools and local councils in SA.
While in town to visit family, I volunteered an afternoon to do a talk about civil vs criminal law at my niece's high school and the speaker before me for the class was an OPAL "education officer". She proceeded to hand out leaflets and info sheets on "healthy eating guides" which to summarize was pretty much eat weet-bix, muffins or toasted fruit loaf for brekky, drink low-fat flavored milk as a snack during the day, don't forget to eat your lunch, finishing with a variety of dinner suggestions which were 2/3 of a plate of rice or pasta with something & a bit of veg - then handed everyone IGA & Colesworths junk mail? At the end of the session I asked the lady if she realised what she just advised them would put the kids at nearly three times the daily recommendation of carbs & sugar, at which point she got fairly snarky. After a bit of further discussion, it turns out her only qualification was a marketing diploma from TAFE & she had ZERO health education of any type at all. On top of that, it turns out she was working in conjunction with local supermarkets to promote recipe's they were advertising that week in their catalogs "to help offer local families with smart ideas on saving money and healthy eating". She then walked out when the Mum next to me pointed out that the only Coles recipe for that week was for a chocolate cake, having the gall to tell us "you don't know what your talking about, the local council and (random masterchef loser I'd never heard about) wouldn't have promoted us on their facebook feeds if we were spreading misinformation"………..
TL/DR, The entire program was a "raising awareness" thing, that did the exact opposite of educating anyone about healthy eating, being outsourced and run by unqualified sales people who were promoting IGA and Colesworths. The program was then being bandwagoned by local councils and d-grade media identities to try and give the impression that they cared or had any interest in actually improving anyone's lives.
Any product with life time warranty, life time of what? shop? manufacture? you or the invoice?
Ozbargain -save money
The truth has surfaced!
"We take your online privacy seriously" - and, nek minute, your details are spread over the Internet.
Sorry I meant it when I said it, but then someone offered me 1/30th of a cent per email address and phone number. Soz.
Banner ads serving crapware:
"Your PC is running slow. Click here to fix"
"You have run out of memory. Fix now"
"Congratulations! You are visitor 1,000,000 and have won a free iPhone!"
Hate going to a cafe and asking for a cafe latte and they say, "large", and you say no just normal, and they interpret normal to mean medium, and their medium turns out to be twice the size of a normal cafe latte.
Generally, when businesses trick you, they should know you will never return again. Guess it works in areas where there is high foot traffic or all tourists.
Off Topic: This reminds me of an Indian take away I went to once where they put the food on the rice, then literally dug out some of the substance and just left mostly gravy. I just walked away without accepting it or paying it. They would never get repeat customers. As the customers disappear, they probably put even less on the rice to keep their margins up. But if they were generous, they would get plenty of customers and make more profit.
Health insurance ads telling people to get in and sign up before the end of June to save on tax when you need to have held that insurance from July 1 (prev year) in order to avoid the levy surcharge completely.
And iSelect/Compare the market in general pretending to offer proper comparisons over all funds.
You know something is wrong when health insurance is about tax and not your health.
And when many of the hospital policies aimed for tax don't actually cover you for private hospitals, only being treated at a public hospital as a private patient (which is nonsense as an idea)
Politician's promises
I just bought sunnies labelled "Polarised" which ended up just being the brand name. They're not polarised at all
Maybe it was a description of the marketing department… they were polarised over whether to rip you off or not.
My kids saying they have cleaned their rooms but everything is shoved under their beds or in the closet.
Large eggs are really the smallest.
Maple (flavoured) Syrup. Chocolate (flavoured) Topping. Where flavoured is in fine print.
http://shop.coles.com.au/wcsstore/Coles-CAS/images/4/6/9/469…
You guys complaining about lack of advertising standards in Colesworths branded items should check out the Woolworths brand carpet and surface cleaning spray bottles (https://www.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Browse/bags-food-wraps-cl…) in their cleaning isle - they don't even list the ingredients or chemicals in the products at all & simply include a 1800-number on the back of the bottle advising to call them if "there's any ill effects from use".
'Gold Class', at least in my area, where you have a 9/10 chance of being in the non gold glass cinema alone, at least on the days i go to the movies.
In WA, it annoys me that the 'Eggs by Ellah' people— Snowdale Holdings (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/dead-chickens-dumped-eggs-…) are still kicking around doing whatever they want. Where they own like literally every second brand of eggs here and employ shocking practices on their farms. Just when I think I've picked up some eggs that aren't theirs, turns out they own that brand too. And does Ellah even exist? She seems like a well thought out PR stunt. If only they spent as much on their farms as their product packaging. And there should be a point where a company can't rebrand their products under different company names, I mean, sometimes their products are literally competing against each other under different brands.
If there is money involved it's full of lies.
If there is power involved it's misleading.
If it's important it's deceptive.
If there are ambitious humans involved then all of the above.
Belong: Powered by Telstra.
Yeah right.
I'd like to think somewhere in China is a magical shop that sells all the world's souvenirs in one place.